Happy Mondays
Leading life and happiness coach
A FRIEND once told me that she would have celebrities and royalty among her clients and that her business would be “up there” with Jo Malone and Estée Lauder. At the time she was operating out of a tired-looking hotel in the West Midlands, renting a grotty room to practise her beauty treatments. Frankly I thought she was on the dippy side of delusional.
Twenty five years on she is a regular at Clarence House, has stores in New York and Dubai and recently won a £100million contract to teach her techniques to the Chinese market. How I wish I possessed her unshakable belief and blind trust. Or at least invested in it while the odds were good.
It must be that sprinkle of magic dust that has covered every single fan of Leicester City FC and teleported it on a wing and a prayer to a 5,000-1 Premier League victory.
All faith takes courage. Belief is the suspension of doubt in the face of adversity or fact and it requires deep resilience. Sometimes originality and talent will fall at the first hurdle if a thin skin and fear of failure underlie them. Keeping on when the chips are down is the key to winning. Failure is not the opposite of success but a major part of it.
Having belief in yourself or your business has a kind of deeply attractive energy that draws to it good things. Given that most of humankind is hardwired to avoid adversity, having faith in what appears to be an unlikely prospect deserves respect. It’s the 5ft 7in Tom Cruise having no issue about playing the macho hero Jack Reacher who stands at 6ft 6in, boasts a 50in chest and was a giant among men, according to the novels in which he has featured. It’s the American socialite Florence Foster Jenkins (who died in 1944) truly believing herself to be a prime operatic singer despite her dire tone, pitch and timing. Meryl Streep, pictured, who plays the deluded diva in the new film bearing her name, admits a certain affection for the character whose unabashed self-belief in the face of universal ridicule never dented her desire to perform and fund her own performances in halls and grand salons. It is with incredulity that we watch folk with wild dreams charge forth in hope into that place where magic randomly happens. They say that hope is the ability to hear the music of the future, faith is the courage to dance to it today. Anyone want to join me in the tango which celebrates my coaching school going global, becoming the British Oprah and filling Wembley Stadium with my take on Piaf?